


Leaving Nothing Behind

by SasuNarufan13



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Disappearance of a child, Established implied slash at the end, Kakashi's POV, M/M, Mentioned Past Character Death, Mystery, Referenced Child Abuse, Suspected Kidnapping, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28007712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SasuNarufan13/pseuds/SasuNarufan13
Summary: It's Friday evening when they get the call: an eight year old boy declared missing.
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 42
Kudos: 209
Collections: Foxy fox 🦊, Team 7 🌀, why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	Leaving Nothing Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: Something that popped up in my head this week and wouldn't leave me alone. Figured it would be an interesting change of what I usually write.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Kishimoto owns it.
> 
> I hope you'll like it!

**Leaving Nothing Behind**

It was Friday evening nearing eight o'clock when Kakashi received the call. Rin, manning the desk today, leant into his office with a worried look on her face.

"Hey, Kakashi, I just got a call from a couple. Their son has disappeared. He should have been home by six, but he didn't show up," she told him, pursing her lips.

"How old?" If the son was a teenager it was likely he had just lost track of time or decided to crash at a friend's place. Wouldn't be the first call that ended up like that.

"Eight."

Hm, that seemed rather young to be crashing at a friend's place, but again, not unheard of. "All right, I'll go talk to them and find out what happened," he said and stood up, shrugging on his jacket. With a bit of luck, the kid was just having fun at a friend's house and they would be able to locate him quickly.

"All right, Yamato is free now so he can join you," she informed him, going back to the front desk.

Yamato met him at the front, his jacket clutched in his right hand and his left carrying a flask with some coffee from the smell of it.

"So a kid who disappeared, right?" he asked for confirmation as they made their way into the parking lot.

"Yeah, eight years old. Should have been home by six, but that's not the case." Kakashi unearthed the car key from his pocket. "With some luck, the kid just forgot the time and we'll be able to track him down quickly."

"That would definitely be the preferable outcome," Yamato agreed and grimaced slightly.

Kakashi sighed inaudibly, knowing they were both thinking about the last case with a missing kid they had dealt with three months ago. The girl, seven years old, hadn't shown up at school during the afternoon. They had searched everywhere, all the places she could have been and even places where a girl of her age would never be, but their efforts had been futile.

Two weeks later they had found her dead in a creek; the cause of death had been ruled drowning after she'd been knocked unconscious by something heavy. To this day they still hadn't found the murderer and with each week that passed with no new leads showing up, they were starting to despair more and more that they would ever find the killer and bring him to justice.

As Kakashi started the car, Yamato cleared his throat. "You think this might be related to the Yamanaka case?"

"I don't know, but I really hope that's not the case," Kakashi muttered.

The morale at the precinct had already suffered a great deal because they hadn't been able to find Yamanaka on time. If this kid turned out to be the second victim …

He shook his head and drove onto the street. No point in assuming the worst already when he didn't have any details yet. For all they knew the kid was just lost or he was having fun with a friend.

* * *

The couple in question was nothing like Kakashi had envisioned. He knew in his field of work it was bad to make assumptions, but when he had been told that the missing boy was eight years old, he had expected to meet a young couple.

Instead he was met with an older man, who he guessed had to be somewhere in his fifties if he wasn't already nearing his sixties, named Danzo and a demure looking woman named Akumu, whose black hair already had several silvery strands streaked through it.

"This is Naruto, our son," Danzo said, showing them a picture of a young boy with the brightest blond hair Kakashi had ever seen.

The boy was the complete opposite of his parents with his messy, blond hair and large, blue eyes. He wore a dark orange shirt in the picture, coupled with a pair of brown shorts and his knees looked scuffed as if he had taken a tumble right before the picture had been taken.

"We adopted him eight years ago," Akumu explained, understanding the police's confusion.

"Yes, sad tale that. His parents passed away in a car accident barely a week after he was born," Danzo told them sombrely; his arm, which was bandaged for some reason, wrapped around his wife's shoulders. "I was doing the rounds in the children's ward when I saw him all alone in the hospital crib. I knew I couldn't leave him behind and we offered to adopt him straight away."

"Doing the rounds? What's your occupation?" Yamato asked interestedly, still studying the picture.

"Ah, I work for Child Protective Services," Danzo replied. "Whenever a child is brought in with suspicious injuries, I'm called to investigate. It's pure luck that I happened to be there when Naruto was brought in."

"So you adopted him. Has he ever acted out? Like run away?" Kakashi inquired, writing down the description in case they needed to spread it.

"No, never," Akumu said, fiddling with her handkerchief. "He always comes home on time, which is why we're so worried now because it's not like him to stay away for so long!" Her voice broke near the end and she took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Where did he go to before he was supposed to return home?" Yamato asked.

"The park just two streets down," Danzo replied, his lips thinning. "He's gone there so many times I've lost count, so when he asked us today whether he could go play there for a bit, we agreed." He shook his head, self-loathing briefly flashing across his face. "Now I wish we hadn't agreed."

"No reason to blame yourselves," Yamato said soothingly. "Don't assume the worst yet. He might have lost track of time or met a friend."

Danzo smiled humourlessly. "For all that he loves to play, he's not good at making friends, I'm afraid."

"He doesn't have any friends?" Kakashi frowned lightly. Which eight year old didn't have any friends? Especially when he apparently played a lot in the local park?

"No, none." She shook her head. "He's a rather shy boy actually, won't even look at strangers."

"We'll go take a look at the park now," Kakashi announced and rose up. "We'll also have a tracking dog ready just in case."

"But hopefully we won't need to use him," Yamato smiled faintly.

"Okay, thank you for helping us. Maybe we're overreacting, but it's not like him to stay away this long," she said, her voice trembling audibly now.

"We'll do our best," Kakashi promised.

He couldn't promise a happy ending; they never could in their field of work.

* * *

They couldn't find him in the park. That became quickly clear after barely half an hour there. The park itself wasn't that big; it had just a handful of benches, some monkey bars and a couple of swings placed in a sand pit and that was it. Some bushes looked big enough to hide a kid behind them, but they showed nothing but a couple of scared mice.

The tracking team was called in and it became immediately clear they weren't dealing with a kid who had run away. The dog followed the scent from the swings all the way up to the entrance of the park where it seemingly disappeared.

As if the boy had stepped into a car.

"Nothing at all?" Kakashi asked tersely.

Inuzuka Tsume turned to look at him; her dog, Kuromaru, sniffing the air still, turning around in circles. "No, nothing," she sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. "The scent ends here, so if I have to guess, I'd say that the boy stepped into a car."

"Could he have been picked up?" Yamato asked, his hands resting in his pockets.

"If that had been the case, Kuromaru would still have been able to track them. He would be sniffing the air then, but he keeps sniffing the ground." She pointed at the road. "He stopped here, so yeah, guess it's safe to assume that the kid got into a car and drove off. Whether or not he was coerced, that I can't tell you obviously."

"Thanks for the help," Kakashi and glanced at his partner; both sporting dark looks.

A second kid disappearing in similar circumstances? He could only hope this wouldn't end the same.

* * *

They went around the houses, questioning people as to whether they had seen something strange between the hours of five and eight.

The couple's neighbour, an elderly woman with a severely wrinkled face who introduced herself as Chiyo, squinted her dark eyes at them before she scoffed and shook her head, leaning heavily on her cane.

"You want to know what happened to that poor boy, you're best off interrogating his _parents_ ," she spat, sneering the last word.

Kakashi exchanged a look with Yamato. "How so? Did you hear them having a fight tonight?"

"A fight? Sure, if that's the new term for beating the crap out of a kid," she grunted and waved them inside.

"Beating? They were abusing him?" Yamato asked sharply.

"Oh sure, not a week goes by without that kid gaining another bruise or scratch," she replied, groaning when she sank into an armchair. She gestured impatiently at the couch. "Go sit down, I don't want to keep looking up at you two."

They complied and Kakashi retrieved his notebook. "What happened?"

"What happens every week since that kid learnt how to walk," she said wearily. "Boy can do nothing good. That harpy starts screaming every time he breathes, I suppose, and his _lovely_ adoptive dad has a hard time keeping his hands to himself. Wouldn't surprise me if that lunatic uses a belt too because I recognise those lashes, oh yes, I do. The gods know my dad was fond of the belt when I was little."

"Was this ever reported?" Yamato demanded.

The look she gave him was decidedly unimpressed. "To whom would I have to report that? He's the head of Child Protective Services, he might not be right in the head, but he isn't stupid enough as to investigate himself," she said cynically.

Clutching her wrinkled, spot marked hands around the knob of her cane, she heaved a loud sigh. "No, all I could do for the kid was treat his injuries and keep him away for at least a little while. Had to feed him too, the poor thing is nearly skin over bones. You say he has disappeared?"

"Yes, the alert came through an hour ago," Kakashi confirmed.

"Well, all I can say is that I hope the kid finds a better life with whoever took him," she said tiredly. "Because I very much doubt it can be worse than what those demons did to him."

* * *

The stories of the abuse were only begrudgingly corroborated by other neighbours, all of them clear about one thing: there was no use reporting the abuse when they knew Danzo would get away with it. They all agreed that Danzo had too much influence and so reporting him wouldn't have done anything but aggravate him and the last thing they needed was a spat with Danzo and his wife.

Naturally when confronted with the allegations, both Danzo and Akumu furiously denied ever having smacked their son, let alone hurt him every week. With no evidence of filed reports or hospital records detailing the various injuries the neighbours claimed Naruto sported every week, the police had no choice but to let the parents go.

Their focus turned towards finding out with who Naruto could have left instead. Because for how much the neighbours seemed to loathe Danzo and Akumu, one thing they all agreed on: Naruto was a very shy boy who would never willingly go with a stranger.

In that case there were two options that could have occurred: either Naruto had been forcefully taken away, perhaps when he had been about to leave the park, or he actually knew the person and would have gone with them without asking any questions.

They turned their attention towards the people Naruto knew, interrogating everyone. It was a rather meagre pool of suspects: his parents, the neighbours, and his teacher, for even in class he was a rather lonely person, ignored by his peers. Not one of them could recall ever having seen him with somebody.

"Nobody at all?" Kakashi asked, a bit frustrated.

It had been three weeks since Naruto had disappeared and they weren't any closer to finding him nor to getting any leads. They had sent out an alert three hours after he'd disappeared and flyers had been hung up all across the town, but so far nobody had come forth with any sort of information, no matter how small.

How could one kid remain under the radar for so long that nobody noticed anything when he disappeared? It had been in a public area even, surrounded by multiple buildings! He hadn't disappeared in an empty field far removed from everything; how could nobody have seen anything?!

"No, sorry," Umino Iruka replied apologetically. He was Naruto's teacher and like the neighbours had noticed the abundance of bruises the boy had been sporting nearly every week.

Unlike the neighbours, he had filed a report, but nothing had been done with that – which confirmed the neighbours' resignation that nothing would come out of reporting the abuse.

"He tended to play on his own and I barely saw him outside of school," Umino went on, looking tired as he rested his hands on the desk. "I really hope you'll find him safe and well, but unfortunately I can't help you."

"Well, thank you for talking to me either way," Kakashi said and left the classroom, still as clueless as when he had entered it.

* * *

They even compared the Yamanaka case with that of Naruto, but it didn't help them further either. Sure, the Yamanaka girl had disappeared in broad daylight as well, again with seemingly no witnesses, but she had been found dead after two weeks.

Naruto had been missing for four weeks now and so far no body had shown up. That kept them somewhat hopeful, because no body meant no dead kid, meant that there wouldn't be a repeat of the Yamanaka case, but if not dead, where was Naruto?

Had he been killed after all, but had his body simply not been found yet? If still alive, where was he being kept? How did he feel? Was he with someone he trusted or with a complete stranger harbouring less than good intentions? If he was with someone he trusted, who was this person and why hadn't they come forward yet? If this person knew about the abuse, they could have decided they wanted to take Naruto away and offer him a better life. Kakashi could understand that.

What he couldn't understand, was why they hadn't at least called the police to assure that Naruto was safe. They had to know everyone was looking for the boy – how long did they think they could keep him hidden?

For a little while they had entertained the thought that Naruto might have been kidnapped in order to demand a ransom, but no such call was ever made and aside from disgruntled neighbours who knew the dark truth of what went behind those walls, the couple didn't seem to have any enemies who might have concocted such a plan.

So if it wasn't for ransom, what for then? Was this the same person who had kidnapped Yamanaka? If so, why were they changing their modus operandi? They hadn't had any problems before dumping the poor girl in a visible place, so if they had killed Naruto, where was his body now?

So many questions, yet no answers were forthcoming.

* * *

Weeks passed into months which passed into years. Television appearances, flyers, vigils, marches, public appeals, age progression pics every few years … Nothing helped.

Sometimes, they received calls of sightings, people who had seen a blond boy walking around, but they all led to a dead end each time. It was as if Naruto had simply vanished into thin air, disappeared like he had never existed in the first place.

Kakashi often looked at his picture, at the grinning boy, to remind himself that Naruto did exist, that he wasn't simple a fidget of his imagination. It was difficult, not knowing whether they were searching for someone who was still alive or a dead body instead. Each call about a dead body having been found filled him with trepidation and each time he was left with this odd mixture of relief and disappointment whenever the dead body turned out to be someone else.

He didn't know why Naruto's disappearance hit him so hard when he had dealt with such cases before. Was it because this boy seemingly had been all alone? No friends, adoptive parents who abused him, neighbours who couldn't rescue him because nobody would believe their reports … Nobody who had paid enough attention to him to see him disappear, taken away in public.

Sometimes at night, he laid in bed and stared at the ceiling, torturing himself with trying to imagine where the blond boy could be right now. Was he dead, his body dumped like trash somewhere, uncared for even in death? Or had he somehow found a better life, a family who actually took care of him, who loved him for who he was?

He dearly hoped it was the latter, but feared it would turn out to be the former.

* * *

Then suddenly, nine years after Naruto's disappearance, they received a call from a man living a hundred kilometres from their town, who announced that he thought he might have seen Naruto walking around in his village.

It seemed incredibly farfetched that after all those years of reaching dead end after dead end that they would suddenly find Naruto alive and well in a village more than a hundred kilometres from where he had been taken.

It was farfetched, but nevertheless he and Rin went to check it out, because this was the first clue they had received in years and they had to know whether there was any truth to it.

"Which house number did he say it was again?" Rin asked, narrowing her eyes as she directed the car at almost a snail speed through the street.

"Sixty-four, he said," Kakashi replied, but then shouted in surprise, making her yelp in shock and slam on the brakes.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she bristled, rubbing her hand over her chest.

"Look!"

She followed the direction in which he pointed and her mouth fell open, echoing his shock.

For there, on the footpath, leisurely walking with a shopping bag in his hand was a blond boy with bright blue eyes, sporting a white shirt and dark blue jeans.

_A blond boy who looked remarkably like Naruto._

* * *

"I don't really understand," Naruto said tentatively; his eyes shooting back and forth between the two of them. "You think I'm the same boy who went missing in your town nine years ago?"

"A town that's more than a hundred kilometres away from here?" a dark haired boy added sceptically.

He had introduced himself as Uchiha Sasuke, Naruto's best friend and if Kakashi had to deduce from the way his hand was clenched around Naruto's hand, his boyfriend as well.

Sasuke's older brother, Itachi, was standing behind the couch, a heavy frown on his face, while their parents, Fugaku and Mikoto, sat there with perplexed faces; the both of them still wearing their office wear.

"I know it sounds farfetched, but you look a lot like him," Rin said and showed them two pictures: the old one where he had been seven years old and a new one, created with the new technique to show how he might have aged throughout the years.

The resemblance was clearly there: the same unruly, blond hair; the same pair of large, bright blue eyes; the same face shape. He didn't look skin over bones anymore, that was true, and his cheeks bore three whisker marks each – a tattoo, he'd explained rather proudly, because he adored foxes and thought it would be fun to copy their whisker marks.

He also wasn't as shy as Danzo and Akumu and the neighbours had claimed he was, but that could simply be because he had grown up.

"Yeah, but my name is Uchiha Naruto," Naruto repeated; a hint of impatience in his voice. "Not Shimura."

"Shimura-Uzumaki actually," Rin corrected him. "Your adoptive parents decided to keep your birthmother's last name."

"They are my adoptive parents," Naruto said, frowning, and pointed at Fugaku and Mikoto. "Not whoever those people are."

"When were you adopted?" Kakashi inquired, resisting the urge to rub his temples to stave off the major headache that was starting to bloom up.

There was no way this wasn't the boy they had been searching for nine years so far, but then why was he so insistent that he didn't know Danzo and Akumu? Stockholm syndrome perhaps? His brain having warped the memories of his adoptive parents after having lived here for so long?

"When I was a baby," Naruto replied and huffed, crossing his legs.

It didn't escape Kakashi's notice that Sasuke gripped Naruto's hand more firmly; the blond turning his hand around to tangle their fingers together.

"And is there proof of that? Do you have his birth certificate and his adoption papers?" Rin requested politely.

"Ah come on, why are you refusing to believe me?" Naruto said annoyed. "I'm sorry you came all the way over here, but you're wasting your time and I don't appreciate what you are - "

"Naruto, sweetheart, it's fine," Mikoto said gently and rose up, padding her way over to a cabinet in the right corner of the room.

She opened the second drawer and plucked a file out of it after riffling through it for a moment. She handed it over to them the moment she sat back down.

"That has everything: his birth certificate, his adoption papers, his sheets with vaccinations, things like that," she rattled off. Brushing a lock of her hair behind her ear, she nibbled on her lip. "It should have everything at least. I keep everything filed away neatly."

Rin opened the file and it indeed held everything Mikoto just had summed up: Naruto's birth certificate – which was the same date as the boy who had disappeared – his adoption papers, doctor's notes … It all checked out, except that the adoption papers had been filed in a town around thirty kilometres from here.

Kakashi frowned, uncertain what to think about it. This had to be the same Naruto who had disappeared nine years ago, but the certificate and adoption papers listed a completely different location. What was going on here?

"Would you mind if we had these examined by an expert?" Rin asked politely. Before Naruto could protest, she tacked on, "This is just part of the routine, something we have to check in cases like this one."

"Yes, certainly, not a problem," Fugaku agreed easily. "You'll find that everything checks out."

"How come there aren't any baby pictures of Naruto-san? Or any picture of him until nine years old?" Kakashi questioned when he realised what had been bugging him all this time when looking at the walls.

They contained several pictures of a very happy looking family, but one detail stood out: none of the pictures contained Naruto when he was still very young. If they had indeed adopted him when he'd just been a baby, wouldn't they have pictures of him back then too?

In all the pictures on the wall Naruto looked to be at least nine to ten years old – coincidentally after he had disappeared.

Fugaku sighed, looking older all of a sudden. "We lost them when our house went up in flames," he said quietly. "We couldn't take any of them when we ran out and we couldn't retrieve them from the computer either."

"I wish we still had them," Mikoto murmured; a far away look in her eyes. "They were so adorable as babies."

"Mother," Sasuke sighed the long suffering sigh of a teenager who was done being embarrassed by his mother.

She shrugged, offering him an impish smile. "It's true. The three of you were so adorable as babies!"

"They really were," Itachi smirked.

"Hey, she's including you as well, bastard!"

"Language!" Mikoto chided him.

"We'll bring these back as soon as the expert is done with them," Rin promised, tucking the file away in her bag.

As they got back into the car, they watched Sasuke pull Naruto behind the house, a basketball clenched between his arm and his hip.

"What do you think?" she asked quietly.

"If this isn't the same Naruto we've been searching for all these years, I'll willingly run a marathon with Gai," he declared and she smiled faintly before sobering up again.

He stared at the large house, watching the door close behind the couple. "But let's wait and see what the expert has to say."

* * *

"Everything's official," Nara Shikaku declared, turning away from his screen.

"Everything?" Kakashi repeated dubiously, crossing his arms. "Nothing seems forged?"

"If they forged this, then hell, I'll go beg them myself to work here," Shikaku said frankly. "Because that would mean they had some serious skill. I've checked it thrice: everything checks out. They adopted this kid seventeen years ago and he's been with them ever since."

"And the fire, they said that their house had caught on fire and that was the reason why they didn't have any baby pictures anymore," Kakashi said, frowning.

"That part is also true," Sabaku no Temari answered, popping the bubble of her gum. "I found several news articles about it. Their house burnt down nearly nine years ago and was reduced to ashes basically. They moved here to make a fresh start apparently."

"So this Naruto …"

"Is not the boy you're looking for, I'm sorry," Shikaku said sympathetically.

Well, fuck.

* * *

"I told you," Naruto huffed, accepting the file back. He'd been the one to open the door this time, dressed in a long shirt and sweatpants.

"Yes well, part of the job is to check everything," Kakashi smiled thinly, feeling slightly unnerved when those deep blue eyes studied him carefully.

The blond sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "Look, for what it's worth, I'm sorry I didn't turn out to be the person you were looking for." He gnawed on his lower lip. "If I had disappeared like that boy, I would want someone to keep looking for me, so I guess, thank you for giving enough of a damn that you came all the way here to check out a lead."

"Yeah …" Kakashi trailed off and shook his head, mustering up a small smile. "Sorry again for having bothered you and your family with this."

Naruto shrugged. "Hey, part of the job, right?" he smiled wryly.

"Right. You have a good day," Kakashi nodded and Naruto's smile widened just a tad.

Right before he closed the door, Kakashi saw Sasuke coming up behind him, pulling him into his arms.

"So, you still think he's the one we're looking for?" Rin inquired when he got back into the car.

"He looks too much like him to just be a coincidence, but … If he _is_ Naruto, then he found a better life for himself after all, don't you think?" he murmured, eyes trained on the door. "A life where he's actually happy, where he doesn't seem to be abused. If this is Naruto – then I'm glad for him."

"Yeah, me too," she said softly and then started the car, preparing to go back to their town.

He would never officially stop looking for that little boy who disappeared nine years ago, but he had finally found some peace as well.

Because that lost little boy seemed to have been found after all – and Kakashi couldn't be happier for him.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> AN2: So, my detectives, what do you think really happened? Is Uchiha Naruto the Naruto they've been searching for? Is it just a coincidence? Do you think Danzo and his wife killed their son? Did a stranger kidnap him? Feel free to comment and let me know what your suspicions are :)
> 
> Please leave your thoughts behind in a review; should you spot any mistakes, please point them out to me.
> 
> I hope to see you all back in my future stories! Please stay safe and take care of yourselves!
> 
> Cuddles
> 
> Melissa


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